Microsoft posted more details about the attacks the next day and said that it would release a patch on Nov. 8, its next software update day and election day in the U.S. Microsoft noted that the attackers using the flaw had been sending spear-phishing emails, or targeted messages intended to deceive recipients into disclosing personal information or into installing malware on their machines.

Microsoft’s threat intelligence team called the attacker group “Strontium,” but many people know the group by other names, including “APT28,” “Sofacy,” or “Fancy Bear. Cybersecurity experts have previously linked this group to the Russian government and, more specifically, to its foreign intelligence agency the GRU.

“This attack campaign, originally identified by Google's Threat Analysis Group, used two zero-day vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash and the down-level Windows kernel to target a specific set of customers,” wrote Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Windows and devices at Microsoft, analyzing the attacks. He added that group tended to leapfrog from one compromised email account to the next, ensnaring victims by sending booby-trapped messages to their contacts.

Myerson added that Microsoft “has attributed more 0-day exploits to STRONTIUM than any other tracked group in 2016.”

For more on cyberespionage, watch:

Here’s how the Russia-linked hacker group worked. First, the team would gain a foothold in victims’ machines by commandeering their web browsers. It would do this by exploiting an unknown flaw (also known as a zero-day vulnerability) in Adobe Flash software--a bug that Adobe patched in an update on Oct. 26.

Next the group would break out of the victim’s browser, escalating privileges (in the industry parlance), through the Windows vulnerability. Microsoft noted that users of its Windows 10 Anniversary Update “are known to be protected from versions of this attack observed in the wild.”

Finally, the hacker group would install a backdoor, or security-bypassing control program, to take over the target’s machine.

Microsoft said it was disappointed by Google’s disclosure before the release of a fix. “Google's decision to disclose these vulnerabilities before patches are broadly available and tested is disappointing, and puts customers at increased risk,” Myserson said.

Google, on the other hand, maintained that disclosing known and “actively exploited” vulnerabilities is in the interest of people seeking to secure their systems.

Hackers already knew about the vulnerability and were using it to compromise people’s machines, Google goog said in a post on its security blog. No fix is available yet.

“We are today disclosing the existence of a remaining critical vulnerability in Windows for which no advisory or fix has yet been released,” wrote Neel Mehta and Billy Leonard, two security engineers at Google. “This vulnerability is particularly serious because we know it is being actively exploited.”

Google notified Microsoft msft of the problem on Oct. 21, Mehta and Leonard said. Citing Google’s bug disclosure policy, which grants software vendors seven days of lead-time to develop and push patches, the pair said they were disclosing the vulnerability “to protect users.”

Normally, Google would wait 60 days before making such bugs public. But when attackers are actively exploiting a vulnerability, that timeframe drops to a week.

The bug affects the Windows kernel, the deepest and most privileged part of the operating system, and can be used to escape security sandboxes, or tools designed to isolate malicious code. For the technically inclined: “It can be triggered via the win32k.sys system call NtSetWindowLongPtr() for the index GWLP_ID on a window handle with GWL_STYLE set to WS_CHILD,” Google said.

For more on computer bugs, watch Fortune’s video:

Google Chrome, the company’s popular web browser, prevents attackers from exploiting the issue on machines running Windows 10 by blocking certain system calls, the company noted. (You can read more about that here.)

Google also found a zero-day flaw in Adobe adbe Flash software, which Adobe resolved in an update on Oct. 26. (You can read more about that vulnerability here.)

Google plans to nix support for Adobe Flash from Chrome this year. In its place, Google said it plans to use HTML5, a markup language that enables multimedia to display online.

“We believe in coordinated vulnerability disclosure, and today's disclosure by Google could put customers at potential risk,” Microsoft said in a statement. “Windows is the only platform with a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible. We recommend customers use Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge browser for the best protection.”

]]>http://fortune.com/2016/11/01/google-microsoft-adobe-zero-day-vulnerability/feed/037 shot in Chicago over weekend as homicides climb nearly 200 above this time last yearrhhackettfortuneFacebook, Uber, Slack, and Pandora Pros Praise Free Security Toolshttp://fortune.com/2016/09/27/facebook-uber-slack-pandora-open-source-security/
http://fortune.com/2016/09/27/facebook-uber-slack-pandora-open-source-security/#respondWed, 28 Sep 2016 01:07:45 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=1811010]]>There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but in an age of seemingly endless hacking attacks technologists will do you one better: free security tools.

Engineers from top tech firms Facebook fb, Uber, Slack, and Pandora p extolled the virtues of open source security software at the Structure Security conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. Open source software, produced as a collaboration between volunteer software developers who often coordinate through the code-sharing website Github, poses an alternative to the standard operating procedure in the cybersecurity industry: packaging up proprietary code and shipping it for a profit.

Proponents of open source software argue that by letting passionate developers get involved and tweak underlying code, the tools they create are stronger and more reliable. Plus, for companies looking to bolster their digital defenses, the software has the added benefit of being free.

“We need more big company involvement in the open source community,” said Nick Anderson, a security engineer at Facebook. He pointed to “hacktoberfest,” a month-long coding fest sponsored by DigitalOcean, a New York-based data center company, as an encouraging example.

Through Hacktoberfest, DigitalOcean gives away free T-shirts to anyone working on an open source software project that meets some threshold of participation. (Specifically, anyone who has submitted four pull requests--essentially, draft code proposals--to projects in October is eligible for a shirt.)

Earlier in the day, Facebook announced that it had released a version of its open source computer network querying tool osquery for Microsoftmsft Windows that scans and monitors computing infrastructure. Anderson, who was heavily involved in the project, told Fortune that the social networking site invested in the project mostly to give back to the community of developers who contribute to it.

Leigh Honeywell, a security engineer at business messaging service Slack who also participated in the panel, stressed the importance of continuously searching for bugs in software built through open source means. “People have to keep looking and doing proper code reviews,” she said, adding that incentives are key.

Lack of scrutiny could lead to problems like “Heartbleed,” a major flaw that affected OpenSSL, a coding component of security software designed to protect Internet traffic, for years before its discovery in 2014.

Prima Virani, a security engineer at Pandora, the music streaming site, said that “security through obscurity”--the idea that code will remain secure because its innermost details are kept secret--is a bad idea. Better to open up software and let more eyes see it, as is the case in the open source community.

For more on open source initiatives by Facebook, watch:

Hudson Thrift, security operations lead at the ride-hailing firm Uber, mentioned that the prevalence of software bugs exposed would only increase. “We’re going to see more public disclosures,” he said, mentioning that his team works with vendors to make sure the open source code they’re using is not vulnerable when security holes become known.

Facebook’s Anderson said there’s another reason he supports the open source movement: cutting through red-tape. When he finds bugs in proprietary code, he would prefer to avoid the time-consuming hassle of coordinating with a company to get the flaws patched. He’d rather just mend the issue and move on.

“It’s frustrating for me as an engineer,” Anderson said. “Having it as an open source project, then I can just go fix it.”

Researchers at the cybersecurity firm Trend Micro tmicy recently discovered two critical vulnerabilities in the software’s code. When the company alerted Apple aapl in November, the electronics giant said it would stop supporting the program on Microsoft msft machines. The security firm’s advice: Uninstall QuickTime, quickly.

The bugs--more technical information on the pair of pests can be found here and here--could allow hackers to hijack affected computers, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team warned last week. The sooner one ditches the software, the better.

Apple has provided instructions on its website detailing how to remove the software from your PC. You can follow the instructions there, or follow Fortune’s condensed version below.

Don’t worry, it’s simple. Here are the steps:

Click the “start” icon.

Click on “settings” (or “control panel” on Windows 7).

Click on “system” (or “programs” on Windows 7).

In “apps and features” (or “programs and features” on Windows 7), locate QuickTime.

Select “uninstall.”

Waste no time, Windows users: The quicker you ditch QuickTime, the more secure you’ll be.

Apple did not immediately respond to Fortune‘s request for comment.

]]>http://fortune.com/2016/04/18/quicktime-uninstall-apple-windows/feed/0Remove folderrhhackettfortuneMicrosoft launched this product 20 years ago and changed the worldhttp://fortune.com/2015/08/24/20-years-microsoft-windows-95/
http://fortune.com/2015/08/24/20-years-microsoft-windows-95/#respondMon, 24 Aug 2015 13:11:27 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=1263905]]>There were round-the-block lines and Jennifer Aniston made an hour-long instructional video for it. Twenty years ago, Microsoft MSFT launched Windows 95, and promptly changed the way we interact with our computers.

On Aug. 24, 1995, Microsoft--at that time a tech company with around $6 billion in sales and 17,800 employees--introduced their newest operating system, a product the New York Times at that time called “the splashiest, most frenzied, most expensive introduction of a computer product in the industry’s history.”

Windows 95 had a few notable add-ons, not least being the now-famous Start menu, a feature so significant that the company dedicated its launch ad to it.

Windows 95 also debuted the multi-tasking toolbar, the minimize-and-maximize window buttons and Internet Explorer, a browser that signaled the company’s intentions to dominate the nascent Internet sphere, as detailed in a famous Bill Gates-memo that same year.

The OS was a hit from the start, selling 7 million copies--at that time packaged in CDs and disks that cost $210 per box--in the first seven weeks alone. It would sell 40 million units in its first year.

Now, the Windows operating system has dropped in the Microsoft totem pole--their latest Windows 10 OS was given out for free, and CEO Satya Nadella has called for staff members to cut the cords of the past: “Our industry does not respect tradition--it only respects innovation,” he said in a company-wide email upon his appointment last February.

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/08/24/20-years-microsoft-windows-95/feed/0gettyimages-51991964jchew1271Microsoft drops a slimmed down Windows 10 for the Internet of thingshttp://fortune.com/2015/08/10/microsoft-windows-iot/
http://fortune.com/2015/08/10/microsoft-windows-iot/#respondMon, 10 Aug 2015 23:59:03 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=1238383]]>Well, hell has frozen over for the Wintel franchise because with Windows 10 IoT Core, Microsoft MSFThas publicly released a version of the iconic Windows software that runs on an ARM processor that isn’t designed for a smartphone. Nope, this software, first announced in February and publicly released on Monday, is designed to run on Raspberry Pi 2 boards and Arduinos, the low-power computers that hobbyists use to build and prototype connected devices. (Raspberry Pi is a $35, Linux-based computer created and built by a nonprofit foundation to help get people interested in building computers.)

The goal is to make sure Microsoft software makes it into the growing community of companies and people building for the Internet of things. Success will keep the software giant relevant, allowing it to learn from its past failure to cultivate a developer base in mobile, which led to another failure to win in the market for consumer apps.

And while some people may take the newly released, slimmed down version of Windows 10 to mean you can build a $35 Windows PC using the Windows 10 IoT Core OS and Raspberry Pi computers, that’s not exactly true. The Windows 10 IoT Core operating system is about building applications for embedded devices such as connected appliances, toys or anything you might think up using the Windows ecosystem.

This is Microsoft’s effort to offer a unified code base across all of types of computers for developers so they can build for everything from the relatively dumb edge devices like refrigerators all the way back to the Windows Server or Microsoft Azure cloud, where the data from that fridge is stored. It’s also a concession that the maker and hobbyist community is building relevant and unique products that Microsoft wants to be a part of from the get go.

This isn’t just engineers or students playing around in their basements. These are entrepreneurs, students and even professionals at design firms and inside labs at large companies prototyping projects that might turn into the next big idea. Just as Apple AAPL used to bet on the education market to get its products in the hands of the next generation of computer users, every chip and cloud company is building a product aimed at makers to influence their purchasing decisions in case their ideas make it big. This is a smart idea given that Gartner predicts that half of the products built from the Internet of things will be built by startups.

So far the forums set up to handle the Windows 10 IoT questions aren’t exactly hopping, and I haven’t met a lot of developers who aren’t content to use Linux, Raspbian or other options. But there are new people willing to pick up Raspbery Pis and Arduinos every day, and adding an operating system they are more familiar with might make them more inclined to jump into making a connected prototype. What will be more interesting is when ARM ARMH publicly releases its version of its ARM mbed OS for the Internet of things, expected later this month.

For more on Microsoft and Windows 10, check out the following Fortune video:

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/08/10/microsoft-windows-iot/feed/0windowsshigginbothamThe cloud, not Windows 10, is key to Microsoft’s growthhttp://fortune.com/2014/10/01/cloud-windows-10-key-microsoft-growth/
http://fortune.com/2014/10/01/cloud-windows-10-key-microsoft-growth/#respondWed, 01 Oct 2014 15:05:28 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=804960]]>Much has already been written about Microsoft's new Windows 10 and the reintroduction of its long-lost Start button after the company unveiled its updated flagship operating system on Tuesday morning. The new OS may provide a much-needed advance over its predecessor, Windows 8, but it is unlikely to restore Microsoft MSFT to its former glory as the operating system of choice for computing devices--certainly not in an era where tablets and smartphones have largely supplanted the PC in terms of attention.

Where Microsoft is seeing a lot of growth, though, is in its cloud-based businesses like Azure (a platform for managing business applications) and Office 365 (the cloud-based version of its signature productivity software suite). In the company's most recent earnings report, revenue from commercial cloud services grew 147%, representing an annualized run rate of over $4.4 billion.

“Our Cloud OS represents the fastest growing opportunity for Microsoft,” newish CEO Satya Nadella said during a call with investors in July. It’s no wonder Nadella, the former executive vice president of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise group, is bullish on the business. Since taking over the top job earlier this year, he has reorganized the company and made selling Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and applications a priority.

Nadella also tapped Scott Guthrie, a longtime Microsoft exec, for his old role. Fortune recently caught up with Guthrie to ask about some of the changes under Nadella, the competition with Amazon, and what differentiates Microsoft’s cloud products.

Fortune: How has your role changed?

Guthrie: I took over in February, I think the same day Satya became CEO. One of the things that Satya talks about is how we’re living in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. I think the cloud and enterprise group in Microsoft has been very focused for the last two or three years on that mission. We've been in the process of transforming our business to really embrace that. I’d say a lot of my focus has been around, how we accelerate that even further? How do we move down that path? And then, how do we embrace customers and build the set of products that they really want in this mobile-first, cloud-first world, and provide a uniquely differentiated offering that we think only we can provide?

What's unique about what Microsoft is offering?

The story I usually tell customers is how we’re really doing three unique things--three things that the combination of which we think is unique in the industry.

One is, we’re focused on and delivering a hyper-scale cloud platform with our Azure service that’s deployed around the world. We’re now in 16 regions around the world. Each region is a cluster of multiple data centers. Put in perspective, Amazon has about half that many regions. Google for their cloud platform only has about a fifth of those regions today. So we actually now have the broadest coverage from a geographic perspective. From a scaling perspective, I think we’re one of [very few]--Amazon and Google being the other two--hyper-scale providers out there that are installing many, many hundreds of thousands or millions of servers every year in our cloud data centers.

We believe that that geographic footprint, as well as the economies of scale that you get when you install and have that much capacity, puts you in a unique position from an economic and from a customer capability perspective, where we can take the customers and can literally spin up tens of thousands of virtual machines, or store petabytes or exabytes of storage instantly anywhere in the world. Ultimately we think there are about three providers out there that are going to be able to meet that need.

Where I think we differentiate then, versus the other two, is around two characteristics. One is enterprise grade and the focus on delivering something that’s not only hyper-scale from an economic and from a geographic reach perspective but really enterprise-grade from a capability, support, and overall services perspective. I think that’s something that Microsoft has really kind of invested for 20-plus years in terms of getting there to be enterprise grade. It’s something you can say pretty easily, that you’re enterprise grade. But it takes an awful lot of time both to build out the muscle and earn the trust of organizations.

The other thing that we have that’s fairly unique is a very large on-premises footprint with our existing server software and with our private cloud capabilities. One of the things that we’re focusing on is, how do we enable organizations and enterprises as well as the startups and ISVs to build solutions that span not only hyper scale public cloud but can also integrate within enterprise’s existing data centers and build hybrid solutions that span across both?

What’s your assessment, in light of everything you just said, of how Amazon has been able to move forward in gaining so much market share?

Well, I think Amazon was one of the first to really go big in the cloud space. So I think there’s certainly a first mover advantage that they’ve been able to benefit from. I wish we started three years before we did with our own cloud effort. Kudos to them for really embracing it as early as they did. In terms of where we’re at today, we’ve got about 57% of the Fortune 500 that are now deployed on Microsoft Azure. Obviously a core part of my mission is to not just be the solid number two but to actually gain on the current leader from a market-share perspective. Ultimately the way we think we do that is by having a unique set of offerings and a unique point of view that is differentiated.

Does the fact that Satya [Nadella] had your role in the organization before becoming CEO in any way change the relationship that you have with the CEO now?

Well, I don’t know if I’d say there’s been a big change from that perspective. I mean, I think obviously we’ve been saying for a while this mobile-first, cloud-first…”devices and services” is maybe another way to put it. That’s been our focus as a company even before Satya became CEO. From a strategic perspective, I think we very much have been focused on cloud now for a couple of years. I wouldn’t say this now means, “Oh, now we’re serious about cloud.” I think we’ve been serious about cloud for quite a while.

Certainly it helps the fact that the CEO is a big believer in cloud and has a bunch of first-hand experience running the cloud businesses. It certainly helps, not only in my world, but also some of the other cloud services that we’re doing, whether they’re device specific or gaming specific or with our Office business, which is outside of the cloud and enterprise group.

The Verge, quoting unnamed sources “familiar with Microsoft’s plans” reported Wednesday that the company might trade in the revenues it gets from licensing Windows Phone and Windows RT by offering free versions of them in order to gain market share. The idea would be to increase opportunities to earn revenues from search ads as well as via Microsoft’s apps and subscription services such as Skype, SkyDrive, and Office.

Microsoft purchased Nokia’s handset business this fall. Because Nokia was by far the largest Windows licensee for phones (it represents 80% of the Windows-powered handset market), a lot of that revenue has been lost anyway. Licensing fees make up the biggest source of revenue for Microsoft’s operating systems.

In fact, licensing is what built the company. In its early days, Microsoft decided that licensing MS-DOS, then Windows, to manufacturers was the best way to dominate the market for personal computers. Apple AAPL took the opposite tack, allowing its operating systems only on its own computers. Microsoft won that battle, and it wasn’t until the rise of the popular Internet, and the subsequent explosion of mobile devices, that licensing became less important in the consumer market than other sources of revenue, such as ads. That’s why Google GOOG was able to dominate the market for phone operating systems, and take up a sizable chunk of the tablet market. Google got into the mobile business to boost its existing business: ad sales. And it has worked. By offering free versions of Windows, Microsoft would be targeting Google by following that company’s own strategy. Microsoft’s main interest there is in taking away as much of Google’s whopping-big share of the online ad market as possible.

If Microsoft is indeed planning such a move, it would mark a big change in its corporate strategy, at least in the consumer market, as well as a tacit admission that its approach to the mobile market hasn’t worked well enough.

The decision will come down to whether the lost licensing fees would be made up for by increased revenues from ads and subscription services. That’s not an easy calculation to make. Microsoft will surely gain market share, but that might not be enough, given Google’s dominance, and the loyalty of Apple customers toward both phones and tablets, which for Apple are high-margin businesses.

As one commenter on The Verge put it, “Microsoft isn't sure whether it should become Google or Apple.” There is a third possibility: that in the mobile market, it will become neither.

]]>http://fortune.com/2013/12/11/report-microsoft-considering-giving-away-mobile-versions-of-windows/feed/0130904094246-nokia-microsoft-620xa2clyons2014Windows 8: Microsoft’s ‘New Coke’http://fortune.com/2012/09/21/windows-8-microsofts-new-coke/
http://fortune.com/2012/09/21/windows-8-microsofts-new-coke/#respondFri, 21 Sep 2012 15:59:11 +0000http://test-alley.fortune.com/2012/09/21/windows-8-microsofts-new-coke/]]>
Will the launch of Windows 8 next month be Microsoft's "New Coke" moment? Like when Coca-Cola introduced a new version of its celebrated drink in 1985, Microsoft's latest iteration of its ubiquitous PC operating system may be too radical a departure from past versions, potentially setting off a revolt among consumers, as New Coke it did for Coca-Cola. And if confusion and bad publicity cloud the launch of Windows 8, the company's plan to take on Apple and Google in the battle to control mobile and tablet markets could be jeopardized.

Microsoft MSFT has been criticized for years for its lack of innovation compared to rivals down in Silicon Valley. Besides the launch of its Xbox gaming system, Microsoft has largely failed to come to market with a truly game-changing product since the launch of its Windows 95 operating system seventeen years ago. The company's current Windows phones have struggled competing with Google GOOG Android and Apple’s AAPL iOS. The company has also shredded billions of dollars to catch up with Google’s lead in search. Its attempts to make inroads in the internet advertising market with the $6.3 billion acquisition of aQuantive in 2007 was a rout that ultimately forced the firm to write the value of the company down to a mere $100 million.

The aQuantive write down earlier this year forced Microsoft to report its first quarterly loss ever, a public relations stain. One could argue that Microsoft's greatest feat in the past few years was walking away from its totally misguided $45 billion bid to take over the broken internet giant Yahoo! YHOO in 2008. If that deal would have gone through, Microsoft would be facing a much bigger write down than just $6.2 billion.

Despite all of its troubles, Microsoft still makes money. This is due to the continued domination of its Windows operating system and its Microsoft Office suite of products, which includes the word processing program Microsoft Word and the spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel. Windows and MS Office make up 25% and 35%, respectively, of Microsoft's total sales and a much larger chunk of its profits. Windows has a desktop market share hovering around a whopping 92%, according to NetMarketshare data. So even with its fumbles and failed ventures, the company remains relevant in the technology world as well as in the investment world, paying out a fat 3% dividend yield to shareholders.

One of the reasons why Microsoft has been able to maintain its massive market share among PC users is the widespread familiarity with Windows and MS Office in both the workplace and at home. Literacy in its major products form part of the bedrock of computing, in other words. No one likes to relearn something — like how to open a document or shut down a computer. So while Wall Street complains about the firm's lack of innovation, users benefit from the consistency in Microsoft products.

Microsoft knows very well how sensitive users are to change. That's why on its latest operating system, Windows 7, users have the ability to customize certain menus to look like they did in previous generations of Windows. But with Windows 8, Microsoft is taking away a multitude of classic features without the ability for users to roll them back. It also adds a slew of new features that don't work very well on a traditional desktop that uses a mouse and keyboard.

It turns out Windows 8 is designed primarily for use on a touchscreen PC, an area of the market that is in its infancy. For example, in the pre-launch version of the operating system, developers and users have had a hard time figuring out how to get off the Windows 8 welcome screen to access their files. The way to do that is to flick up, a motion that is somewhat intuitive on a touchscreen, but is totally foreign using a mouse and keyboard.

Getting started is just the beginning of the nightmare. Once inside, instead of the normal Microsoft desktop, which has been around for decades, users are greeted to a bunch of colored squares floating in a black background, called "live tiles." The squares run off the screen horizontally, forcing users to flick to the right or left, or side scroll using a mouse, which is again a foreign motion for most users on a non-touchscreen device. There is one way to get to a screen that looks like a desktop, but it is missing the "start" button in the taskbar, which normally serves as the gateway to all of the computer's functions. By removing the start button, the fake desktop basically loses its primary purpose.

There has been loads of criticism about the usability of the operating system. For example, it takes three or four steps to simply shut down the computer. Important menus like "control panel" and others simply don't exist, with their functions spread out all over the floating tiles. So besides being different, the new operating system also looks inefficient. Naturally, Microsoft feels differently. "Throughout the history of computing, people have again and again adapted to new paradigms and interaction methods--even just when switching between different websites and apps and phones,” Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft, wrote in an extensive blog post on the history of Windows. "We will help people get off on the right foot, and we have confidence that people will quickly find the new paradigms to be second-nature."

To be fair, Microsoft was smart to develop a tablet-based operating system, but it just seems to have jumped the gun a bit. While the PC market is expected to move eventually to being touch based, the transition has barely begun and is expected to take several years to make its way through the market. The company will be launching Windows 8 on a number of touchscreen mobile phones as well as on their own tablet PC, the Microsoft Surface, which will be the first Windows-based computer to be designed by Microsoft.

Touchscreen phones and tablets are ideal launching pads for Windows 8, but forcing the operating system down the throats of PC users now, when 99% are not using touchscreen PCs, seems like a mistake. That's because the frustration users are likely to experience using Windows 8 on their PC could cause them to shun Windows 8 phones and the Surface. The fear here is that those "Live tiles" could give users the digital equivalent of PTSD, making them run in horror every time they see them.

That would be a shame because Windows 8 isn't bad running on touchscreen devices. Starting in a distant third position behind Apple and Google on the mobile platform, Microsoft needs Windows 8 to launch flawlessly if it intends on grabbing market share from either company in that critical growth market. It's hard to see how that can happen given all the negative comments that have floated up from IT professionals who have been using the pre-launch version of Windows 8 for nearly a year. The general consensus seems to be that Windows 8 would be best restricted to touchscreen devices, but that seems impossible now with the product launch only a month away.

Windows and MS Office may not be the best software in their respective fields, but they are comfortable and familiar to users, like an old glove or a sip of Coke. The Coca-Cola Company took a drumming when it took away that comfort and familiarity from consumers back in 1985 with the launch of "New Coke." But the company eventually relented, reintroducing its old formula alongside the new one three months later, calling it "Coca-Cola Classic."

Microsoft would be wise to learn from Coca-Cola's experience and should have a contingency plan ready allowing early adopters of Windows 8 to downgrade back to Windows 7 in case mass hysteria breaks out. A Microsoft spokeswoman told Fortune that companies that buy the Enterprise edition of Windows 8 will be able to downgrade to Windows 7 and that everyday consumers can get a refund on Windows 8 within the first 30 days of purchase if the software was bought from the Microsoft store.

If Microsoft can address user concerns before they panic, then Windows 8 may survive and grow strong among touchscreen devices. In the Coca-Cola case, the damage was irreparable, forcing the company to kill New Coke. The stakes in this case are much higher for Microsoft. Killing Windows 8 just because it's a bit ahead of its time would not only be a massive waste of resources, but could also set Microsoft back so far in the race to control the mobile market that it might never catch up to its competitors, leaving it trapped in the PC forever.